Westminster, California - BPSOS-Orange County recently received the the EPA's prestigious 2009 Environmental Justice Achievement Award through its work with the Fish Contamination Education Collaborative, a joint project of BPSOS-Orange County and other government and community partners. The award recognizes the coalition's successful work "in achieving public health and environmental justice goals."

Specifically, the EPA recognized FCEC "for its work to reduce the consumption of contaminated fish by the local Vietnamese and Chinese communities, and angler populations near the Palos Verdes Shelf Superfund site.

The FCEC worked extensively to encourage communities to adopt safe fish-eating habits, remove contaminated fish from local stores, and implement catch-and-release programs for local anglers. By integrating the efforts of local nonprofit, community-based organizations and local, state, and federal governmental agencies, FCEC’s angler and community outreach programs have brought about a range of behavior change efforts to protect the most vulnerable populations from local fish contamination.

Using community-based social marketing, web technologies, a consumption advisory, and fishing restrictions, the program has reached over 8,000 anglers in the past 5 years. Follow-up surveys on consumption habits in 2007-2008 showed the proportion of Vietnamese community members adopting safer cooking habits increased by 40 percent, and the number of anglers aware that the white croaker fish population was contaminated increased by 50 percent.

The FCEC continues to utilize strategic planning tools that bring the stakeholders together to jointly set goals and numeric objectives for the project. The program has demonstrated that community outreach and education can achieve risk reduction goals."

Congratulations to BPSOS-Orange County!

• Click here for the official award announcement.